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60 to be ridiculed by the ―waiters in bow-ties on the terrace‖ (299). Despite the waiters‘ feigned superiority, they remain on the terrace outside the master‘s house. Walcott emphasizes their bow ties in order to allude to the archer Philoctete and Odysseus‘ great bow. Philoctete was briefly mentioned in the Iliad and featured in an eponymous play by Sophocles. The heroes in Sophocles‘ play deposit Philoctete on an island because his wound from a snake bite stinks and his cries of pain are too loud, but an oracle reminds them they need his peerless skills with the bow to win Troy and Helen. Odysseus and Achilles‘ son Neoptolemus return to the island of Philoctete‘s exile to bring his ―infallible bow‖ (Breslin 247) back to the epic battle. They figuratively untie his bow. If the waiters have been simplified by History and reduced to lackeys on the master‘s terrace laughing at poor Achille, they are unable to string Odysseus‘ great bow and purge their island household of its unworthy suitors with the ―clacking cameras‖ (299). The bow ties symbolize the contradictory life prospects of the Caribbean tourist economy for indigenous West Indians. Achille is only one islander who faces the oppressive tourist economy. As a waitress who ―dint take no shit / from white people and some of them tourist,‖ Helen does not last long at her job (33). She responds to the lecherous and rude customers by ostentatiously ripping off her uniform and storming ―out the hotel / naked as God make me‖ (34). Helen rebukes the humiliating service job by stripping the uniform and baring her body and self in defiance to the cyclopean tourists. Her proud expression of defiance earns her a bad reputation with the island‘s remaining restaurants, so she sets up a stall near the beach to braid the tourists‘ hair in ―cane-row style‖ (36). Assimilating the tourist economy provides Caribbean subjects with a highly limited amount of social mobility that contradicts their dignity and marginalizes the defiant few
61 who refuse to wear the uniform. If s(he) rejects the service economy, s(he) faces the scorn of taxi drivers and waiters, and the simplifying gaze of first-world eyes, for living the old ways. Achille‘s frustration at being what seems like ―the only fisherman left in the world,‖ combines with strange weather to convince him that his life prospects would improve ―someplace‖ else, ―some cove he could settle like another Aeneas, / founding not Rome but home‖ (301). Two arguable signs of global warming, surprising rains during the dry season and the rising levels of ―bursting seas,‖ convince Achille that ―somewhere people interfering / with the course of nature‖ (299). Seven Seas tells him that like the Arawak, the egrets, and the parrots, ―man was an endangered / species now‖ (300). Although he and Seven Seas know that the marlins, albacore, shrimp and human beings are endangered, the two islanders‘ limited spheres of influence can do nothing to halt the commercial trawlers‘ over-fishing, ―the discos, the transports, the greed, [and] the noise‖ (301). Achille learns exactly how tenuous and endangered his lifestyle and habitat are by remaining committed to his work and his island. He finds this knowledge sufficiently ―enraging‖ (300) to enlist healed Philoctete for a journey to somewhere, any place else. They load up the canoe and go south, ―searching‖ for a neocolonial anti-isle, 36 an innocent beach where Achille could revert back to the simplicity of his childhood. They find no virgin bay in which to harbor their canoe and start life over. They keep going south, however, towards the Grenadines, like Jonah towards Tarshish, until they witness a surfacing whale—―Baleine,‘ said Achille‖ (303)—whose disturbance of the water swamps In God We Troust. Shaken by the awesome display of the leviathan, 36 DeLoughrey reads the ―Antilles‖ of European exploration in the Atlantic and Pacific as ―utopian counter-lands‖ (6).
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RE-INHABITING THE ISLANDS: SENSES O
Page 3 and 4:
TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract . . . .
Page 5 and 6:
environmental context for American
Page 7 and 8:
Life of Pi narrates the journey of
Page 9 and 10: 9 I approach the complex and themat
Page 11 and 12: 11 heroic fisherman Achille both ar
Page 13 and 14: offer readers ways to perceive a li
Page 15 and 16: To gain a sense of Snyder‘s situa
Page 17 and 18: 17 cultural traditions of their par
Page 19 and 20: North American homeland. I analyze
Page 21 and 22: 21 primitive 10 social structures f
Page 23 and 24: 23 castaway gives up the idea of re
Page 25 and 26: other.‖ His chosen place in the h
Page 27 and 28: 27 exclaims in affirmation to this
Page 29 and 30: the overthrow of ―patriarchy and
Page 31 and 32: 31 —wind, shake stiff thorns of c
Page 33 and 34: deities. He invokes the ―Sky Gods
Page 35 and 36: 35 where ―sea-people‖ and ―se
Page 37 and 38: 37 CHAPTER TWO: O-MER-OS, SINGING T
Page 39 and 40: 39 (2) because all landmasses, stri
Page 41 and 42: 41 Puerto Rican writer Antonio Pedr
Page 43 and 44: 43 forward to a promised pig for ne
Page 45 and 46: 45 and a ball and chain, everywhere
Page 47 and 48: ―intertextuality has been seen as
Page 49 and 50: of initiation into the songs and pr
Page 51 and 52: 51 Walcott utilizes the canoe 33 as
Page 53 and 54: 53 Why waste lines on Achille, a sh
Page 55 and 56: 55 generally. Omeros is a multi-fac
Page 57 and 58: 57 while the latter applies the ―
Page 59: 59 Dante‘s Malebolge 35 in Sulphu
Page 63 and 64: growing environmental movement, whi
Page 65 and 66: 65 Contemporary environmental probl
Page 67 and 68: Environmental Criticism 63). Coloni
Page 69 and 70: 69 psychological‖ (Elder 110) ans
Page 71 and 72: 71 upward social mobility was a pri
Page 73 and 74: this luxury, to see nature as denud
Page 75 and 76: 75 family roots in Texas and Washin
Page 77 and 78: 77 symbolism for a sensibility that
Page 79 and 80: Western mythos that Derek Walcott d
Page 81 and 82: 81 negotiate the challenges of New
Page 83 and 84: 83 WORKS CITED Adams, Carol J., Ed.
Page 85 and 86: 85 2002. Print. Carpenter, Kevin. D
Page 87 and 88: 87 100-08. Print. Intergovernmental
Page 89 and 90: Oelschlaeger, Max. The Idea of Wild
Page 91 and 92: 91 ---. Regarding Wave. New York: N
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